Aaron Sorkin’s A Few Good Men to Get the Live NBC Treatment

NBC has been at the forefront of the recent network movement toward live television. The 40-year home of Saturday Night Live kicked off the recent live musical revival with 2013’s Sound of Music. They ambitiously staged all of Season 3 of their sitcom Undateable live. And now they’ll be the first network in decades to expand into the realm of live non-musical theater with a production of Aaron Sorkin’sA Few Good Men.

Deadline reports that NBC—which had huge success with Sorkin’s The West Wing—has settled on his first play to usher in a new non-musical theater phase of programming. A Few Good Men debuted on Broadway in 1989 to rave reviews and though the Oscar-nominated film production starring Tom Cruise, Demi Moore, and Jack Nicholson is more famous, the stage version garnered a Tony nomination for star Tom Hulce and featured a lot of future stars like Stephen Lang, Ron Perlman, and Clark Gregg and some future Sorkin regulars like Bradley Whitford, Timothy Busfield, and Josh Malina. Another Sorkin favorite, Rob Lowe, starred in a 2005 revival in London.

The story of military misconduct was originally set in 1986 and is based on real events. But with its plot hinging on Guantanamo Bay, the events don’t seem very distant.

An NBC production based on the theatrical version will air in 2017. Sorkin will both write the teleplay and executive produce the production. Heaping praise on the network, Sorkin said in a statement, “I’ve been incredibly impressed watching NBC resurrect live musical theater for television and I’m eager to team up with Craig [Zadan] and Neil [Meron] to help bring live drama back as well.”

Many have already noted that A Few Good Men with essentially one non-male role is hardly a female-friendly production. Some have already called for Sokin and NBC to make the 2017 version more diverse. But whether or not A Few Good Men gets an update, its success could pave the way for other, more diverse non-musical productions. We have the ratings success of The Sound of Music to thank for the far more critically beloved production of The Wiz Live! that aired in 2015. A Few Good Men could be just the beginning of a new age of televised theater.